"Ballast" is truly a winter's tale, set in a bleak and rainy corner of the Mississippi Delta and recounting the story of three African Americans teetering on the edge in just about every way.

Writer-director Lance Hammer allows the audience no distance - we are immediately plunged into the lives of these afflicted individuals, whose relationships to each other are only slowly revealed.

The principals are Lawrence (Michael J. Smith Sr.), a hulking man who has been stunned into near catatonia by the suicide of his brother, with whom he runs a small rural grocery store; Marlee (Tarra Riggs), a much-put-upon cleaning woman with a history of drug use; and her 12-year-old son, James (JimMyron Ross), who's getting nothing out of school and is falling under the sway of some teenage dope dealers.

The network of ties between these characters is clarified gradually, and since that's the point of the picture, I won't give more details. Suffice it to say that all three exist in a kind of painful trance, and the question is whether they will rouse themselves.

There are numerous incidents that linger in memory, including several in which James' life threatens to spin entirely out of control. Besides his troubles with the drug pushers, he winds up pulling a gun (and more than once) on Lawrence, who gives the boy money and seems to accept this treatment as if it were a duty.

In another telling scene, Marlee reacts despairingly to losing the job she hates but desperately needs. It's a powerful moment that says a lot about the emotional strains of living on subsistence wages, a life that permits no margin for error.

Hammer, making his debut here, uses mostly nonprofessional actors, minimal, elliptical scenes and a naturalistic soundtrack to detail his characters' struggles to survive - and the stakes truly are life-or-death - in this impoverished corner of the South.

The impressive cinematography is by Lol Crawley, an Englishman who attracted notice on the festival circuit in 2001 for his short "Field." "Ballast" is his first feature.

"Ballast" was shown at this year's San Francisco International Film Festival, where it won a prize from the International Association of Film Critics. The film also won directing and cinematography awards at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.